Musings on the Abstract and Bewitching
by SushiBomb
Summary: Fon contemplates his fellow Arcobaleno, and one member in particular captures his attention above all others. Fon x Viper Not really yaoi/shounen-ai: More details inside. Rated for themes and content. Enjoy!


A/N: I was inspired by the latest chapter of Katekyo Hitman Reborn to write this. The Adult!Arcobleno seriously do NOT get enough attention despite how utterly badass they are, and well, that's not okay.

Also, I am officially a Fon x Viper shipper. Fight me.

Notes/Warnings: As usual, anything recent I write concerning Viper follows the _Crawl with the Heretics_ headcanon *credit always goes to **Lulu-Ichigo**, since it's her original headcanon*

You can read this independently, but parts of it, i.e. the parts about Viper, will make much more sense if you read _Crawl with the Heretics _before or immediately after this.

_Also_, even though everyone in the Arcobaleno is mentioned, this _is_ a Fon x Viper, moreso at the end, but nothing like really major. So if you're not into yaoi or anything of that sort, relax. Your head won't blow up if you read this. There's much more to it than 'omfg teh hot yaoiz!11!1' so please don't take it that way.

This is the first part of a headcanon I'll soon be developing for these two. Cheyah :D

Now READ.

Disclaimer: Sushi*Bomb does not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn.

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><p>Musings on the Abstract and Bewitching<p>

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><p>Not that Fon would ever openly say so, for he was a polite man by nature and would rather keep his more untoward opinions to himself, but after the first few months in the home he was currently residing in while they all prepared themselves for the task of becoming Arcobaleno, he had come to a rather unsettling conclusion.<p>

He was in the company of, without a doubt, what was quite possibly the strangest assortment of people ever to be gathered against their will under one roof.

A pregnant, shamanic boss, a fedora-wearing hitman whose aim was a little _too_ good, a mad scientist, an ex-stuntman-turned-assassin, a no-nonsense ex-COMSUBIN officer, and a moody, psychic illusionist with an almost obsessive love of money.

Compared to the Chinese Triad, where most of the assassins were pretty uniform, as far as the Italian mafia went, hitmen came in all shapes, sizes, and social statuses, and with abilities that Fon had never known to be possible before his arrival in Italy.

These Italian assassins were a breed apart, alright.

But for every ounce of aptitude they had, they matched it with their propensity for erratic behavior, violence, and general oddness.

"Would you like a cappuccino, Reborn?"

"Mmm. I'll make it myself, if you don't mind."

"No, of course I don't mind."

He could begin with Reborn's ridiculously suspicious, borderline paranoid personality, but given that the man was a hitman of almost supernatural ability (not that they all weren't of that caliber, but Reborn seemed to be in a league that refused to submit to the laws of human nature), Fon was certain that, somehow, Reborn could probably sense Fon's thoughts about him. And Fon certainly didn't want to wake up staring down the barrel of Reborn's Beretta. He'd already landed himself in that situation once before, and he did not care for a repeat.

All he'd asked was if the man had wanted sugar in his tea, for Christ's sake.

He knew that Reborn had his reasons; he was considered the greatest hitman in the world, and Fon didn't doubt for a second that he had scores of lesser mafiosos out to claim his life, for if they managed to off the great Reborn, it would bring them prestige beyond the understanding of their feeble minds.

But despite his usual coldness when it came to business-related affairs, on a personal level, Reborn himself was quite an interesting man, with an intellect well beyond his years, and that scholarly side to him came out after a few rounds of whiskey. It was comforting to Fon to have someone around who spoke his native Mandarin dialect with such fluency, and he soon found a reluctant friend in the hitman.

Unlike Verde.

"Fon, where did you move the stack of notes I had on the table?"

"There were no notes on the table, Verde."

"Yes, Fon. There were. An entire folder's worth, to be exact. Please find them for me at once."

"I'm not an errand boy, Verde. Don't blame others for your disorganization. Your missing notes are not my fault _or_ my problem."

Verde was, to be blunt, a basket case.

As a scientist, Verde was undoubtedly unmatched in every field, and the man's almost frightening dedication to his work could be awe-inspiring at times, but most of the time it was more annoying than anything else. Verde was of the 'elitist-genius-slash-mad-scientist' breed of man, and he often went well out of his way to belittle them with his superior mental acuity. That was until that one day when Reborn thoroughly schooled him on an obscure evolution theory that they, as in everyone not involved in the argument, had never even heard of up until then.

After that, Verde tended to keep to himself mostly, but wherever he was, his research was never more than two feet away.

That didn't keep the man's weirdness from creeping out occasionally, though.

Verde was a brilliant scientist, but had no real clue how to interact with people. None of them did, really, but many times, his inconsideration for others often reached near preposterous levels. The day he stole Skull's pet hamster Bernard to use as a live test subject for an experiment always came to mind when the subject of Verde's lack of consideration for the property of others was in discussion. Verde had something of a one-track mind when it came to his research, and often completely disregarded things like Skull's feelings about his hamster when it was for the good of his research.

Anything in the name of science.

Naturally, Skull was inconsolable when Verde reported the results of his experiment, and consequently about the death of his beloved Bernard, the next day on their way into town. Verde gave the young cloud guardian a strange look before shrugging and wandering off, and left Skull a crying mess in the middle of Rome. Skull ended up in bed for a week, sobbing under his covers in the dark. After that, Verde was given the well-deserved nickname, "Hamster-Killer."

Skull would never let it go, either.

But other than his sworn vengeance on Verde, Skull himself was a nice kid, for the most part. A bit brazen at times, but once he warmed up to them, Skull was actually quite pleasant. Especially around Luce, who seemed to bring out the orphaned child in Skull, and the ex-stuntman was shameless in his desire for Luce's motherly affections. It was sweet, really.

But on the other side of the coin, Skull was _also_ the craziest daredevil he'd ever met.

He reminded Fon of those kids that couldn't sit still for even one second, and had an obnoxious tendency to do really stupid and dangerous things, like backflip off of the roofs of their houses into their pools.

Which Skull did.

But on a motorcycle.

It seemed that the name 'The Immortal Skull' was quite literally made just for him, because the very first day there, Skull immediately gushed about all of the amazing stunts he could do down the side of the mountain, and then later proceeded to perform all of the aforementioned stunts and ended up in the hospital with a fractured tibia and his collarbone broken in three places.

How Skull survived all of the insane stunts he did was beyond Fon's reasoning, but Skull, Fon soon decided, was just one of those people who took some sort of masochistic pleasure in being injured all the time. And that masochistic side of Skull seemed to mesh unfortunately well with Reborn's inherent sadistic streak, for as much as Skull liked to _get_ hurt, Reborn took extreme pleasure in _hurting_.

Not to mention the kid had a rather troublesome habit of sticking his foot in his mouth at moments that were extremely precarious.

Fon sighed to himself as he heard a few choice words out of the ex-stuntman's mouth, followed by the sound of a gun –a machine gun, from the rapid fire- firing from somewhere just outside the kitchen window. Skull had said something rude to Lal again.

Everything about Skull just seemed to be counter-productive to him living. The kid must have had some phenomenal insurance coverage, Fon thought, because his medical bills _had_ to be in the millions.

At that moment, none other than Lal Mirch stormed into the kitchen, grunting slightly as she casually heaved her machine gun –now empty- onto the kitchen counter.

"Chicken dumplings?" She asked brusquely.

"Yes. Would you like one?"

It was quite possibly the briefest conversation Fon had ever had the pleasure of having with a woman, but brief was how Lal preferred to keep things.

But despite her conditioned, militant curtness, Lal Mirch was a woman after his own heart. Not only was she a fantastic sparring partner, who was skilled in several forms of obscure martial arts that Fon himself was also proficient in, but she was also an adventurous eater. She always seemed to be around just in time to volunteer to be his guinea pig when he tested out a new recipe; so often in fact that at one point, Fon was sure she just stood in the hallway waiting until the moment Fon said aloud that he needed someone to sample his recipes, so that then she could _nonchalantly_ walk in and say that she 'just happened to be passing by'.

Lal was _also_ a violent beast.

Well, those were Skull's exact words to describe her actually (that had been the same day Fon had come to the conclusion that Skull had some unaddressed suicidal tendencies, as well as that apparently great insurance), but at times, they were unfortunately accurate. Lal had a temper not unlike that of an elephant bull in Must, and a homicidal attitude to match.

And apparently, Reborn rather liked his women homicidal, because the man took some perverse pleasure in going out of his way to taunt Lal when he knew she had a gun or three on her person. Fon couldn't remember when their dining room table began to double as a makeshift gun range, but not a single day went by when she and Reborn weren't packing heat around a bowl of pasta.

The one day when she pulled a Desert Eagle literally out of nowhere and fired off four rounds in Reborn's direction without even flinching from the formidable recoil of such a powerful handgun always came to mind when he thought of Lal. Not because of her obvious capabilities with semi-automatic weapons, which had clearly caught Reborn's interests as well, but mainly because if he didn't have years of martial arts conditioning under his belt and thus lightning fast reflexes, one of those bullets would've blown his head clean off of his shoulders.

But other than almost killing him, Lal was, in reality, actually pretty nice.

Not _nice_, as in cheerful and smiling and flowery, but nice as in she was much more tolerant of Fon than the others. Tolerant was a better word to describe her, he thought. Tolerant, if not a bit stern, in her mindset. Lal could've been labeled a tomboy, but Fon felt that such a word was not a fitting description of the ex-military officer.

She could be perfectly feminine when she wanted to be; Lal was a beautiful woman and she was confident in that, but that didn't mean that she was the kind of woman who would parade around in skimpy lingerie and hop into bed with all of them. Lal was not that type of woman. She wore the pretty dresses Luce would give her, simply because she just couldn't find it in her to say no to Luce. And they really did flatter Lal's military-hardened but still very feminine figure, but they all knew Lal felt much more at home in a black tank and baggy cargo pants with her fist in a man's face.

The kettle on the stove began to steam a bit, signaling that the tea was ready. Fon quickly busied himself with pouring the tea. He began whistling a soft folk tune from his native village back in China as he walked out to the patio, where the boss of their little family was sitting, a hand resting on the swell of her belly.

"I brought you some cream too, Luce." He said as he set down her cup, along with a small saucer.

"Oh, is the sweet tea you were telling me about?" She asked placidly. He nodded amiably as he poured a spoon full of cream into the still steaming tea, stirring it idly before sliding the milky tea to the Arcobaleno boss.

"This is delicious. Thank you, Fon." She said with her usual serene smile, and with that, Fon excused himself and returned back into the house.

Luce was an indescribable woman.

They were all there because of a prophetic dream she had had many months before, and while a few of them were quite skeptical of this 'dream,' the bosses of their respective families knew the power of the Giglio Nero family, hence why they were all there against their will in the first place. But honestly, it was hard to form a real opinion of her at first.

She was nothing like what any of them had been expecting bar Reborn, who knew Luce long before any of the other members of the arcobaleno. She was kind, if not a bit nervous, to meet all of them face to face; a simple tray of cookies was not only her icebreaker, but also her sincere form of condolence for gathering them with the intention of having them all become infants in a years time.

They all knew it was for the good of the world, but that didn't make it any easier.

But as far as Luce as a person was concerned, she was quite literally the most lovable woman Fon had ever met. They each warmed up to her in their own way, one by one, until it was pretty much impossible for anyone to refuse her. She was a manipulative creature, but in the most painfully nice way possible.

As Reborn would say, she was an arm-twister with an angelic smile. And no statement was truer. It didn't matter that she was the boss of a prominent mafia family, because not once in their short time together had she ever felt the need to pull rank on anyone.

Fon was certain that Luce was the original creator of the dreaded 'puppy eyes,' and by the Gods was that pitifully sad look Luce could muster up when someone was about to say 'no' to her downright dangerous. Saying 'no' to Luce's Infamous Puppy Eyes ™ was on the same level of horrible cruelty as clubbing a baby seal, and as far as Fon knew, no one in the arcobaleno had anything against baby seals. (Except Verde, perhaps. He had no issue slaughtering hamsters in the name of science, after all.)

Point being, when Luce wanted something, she got it.

And no one had a problem going along with that, because Luce baked them cookies and cakes, and cooked her famous four-cheese rigatoni every Thursday night without fail and spoiled them rotten because that was just the kind of woman Luce was. She cared for them like they were her own family. It was her way of making their last year of regular life the best that it could be, and she admitted that she had come to care for them as more than a bunch of powerful, unruly hitmen under one roof.

…Unless she was having one of those violent mood swings. Then everyone made it a point to steer clear of Luce until she was back to normal. _Normal_ pregnant women were a force to be reckoned with. A pregnant mafiosa, Fon realized very soon, may as well have been a Titan.

Surprisingly, it was Reborn who went out of his way to drag her out of her frequent prenatal depressions. Usually by way of hoisting Luce up out of her seat and embracing her close as he danced the two of them around while singing Old Italian love songs to her. Reborn had quite a sense of humor when it came to Luce, or as he frequently called her, Dulce de Luce.

Everyone seemed to think that little nickname was funny except Fon himself. But it was probably a language thing.

Luce would just blush and walk away, and Reborn would immediately chase after her –still serenading her at the top of his lungs- all the way up to her room.

Everyone had their suspicions about the nature of Reborn and Luce's relationship, but no one would dare say a word. Not even Skull, for once.

But out of everyone, despite their numerous quirks and obvious personality issues, there was one member of the group that Fon found himself far more intrigued with than the others.

As Fon made his way back to his room, he noticed that the door to their most elusive member's room was slightly ajar. From inside, Fon heard Viper's soft, monotone voice, for once not counting money. It sounded more like chanting.

Fon rapped on the door lightly, and the chanting stopped.

"What is it?" Viper asked, voice still low, if not a bit irritated at being interrupted. Fon poked his head in, a small smile on his face.

"Dinner will be ready soon. I was just wondering if you'd be gracing us with your presence this evening?"

If Viper had caught the obvious taunt in Fon's words, he made no show of it. The mist arcobaleno gave him a dead blank stare before shrugging a shoulder and turning back to the large map on his desk.

Fon took the illusionist's shrug as both a 'maybe' to his question as well as a dismissal, and without another word, vacated the doorway and returned to his own room across the hall.

Every member of the Arcobaleno had many sides to them; some good and bad, some good and okay, some bad and worse. Viper was no different, and yet, he was completely separate from everyone else. And Fon wasn't necessarily sure what it was that intrigued him more about Viper. The illusions, the mind-reading, and the other mind-blowing psychic feats, or Viper's obsessive love of money.

If it wasn't for the fact that Viper was an assassin with a gifted, supernatural mind, the illusionist could very well have made a living as some sort of financial mogul. Viper was already extremely entrepreneurial as far as making himself a commodity among the numerous mafia families he had worked for in the past went, both as a psychic and as an assassin, and had a mind for numbers that nearly rivaled Verde's.

When they dealt with his personal finances, of course.

And judging by the sheer number of zeroes Viper had listed on his financial statements, Viper's price-tag ran pretty high.

Viper's propensity for greed was often the butt of jokes between them, particularly when Reborn asked him one night if he would sell himself for a night for two grand, and Viper didn't hesitate for a moment to even think about what was being asked. Anything that would make him money, no matter what, was automatically a yes, and the mist guardian was honestly baffled by everyone's laughter when he said "Obviously. Two thousand dollars is a lot of money."

Money was money in his mind, and the ends always justified the means.

But to Fon, it was a bit troubling.

To him, Viper's answer to a question like that, one that was meant to be humorous, spoke volumes about what kind of person Viper really was underneath that callous and greedy façade.

But monetary greediness aside, in the privacy of his mind, Fon could admit that out of everyone, Viper was still the most alien to him, simply because he was so different from anyone he had ever met. Everyone in the arcobaleno had a past, Fon could readily attest to that fact. But Viper quite literally had a darkness about him; a nefarious aura that followed him around like a black rain cloud over his head, and that, Fon found unsettling, to say the least.

Truth be told, sometimes he thought Viper was a bit creepy, especially on those days when the illusionist would barricade himself in his room and threaten their lives if they dared to set even a toe inside. They would hear things flying and slamming around upstairs; sometimes the crashes were so violent they swore there was a typhoon or something happening up there.

And then later, Viper would come downstairs, like nothing happened, though they could see the exhaustion in his movements.

Luce would always hug him then.

She had a way of knowing things that they didn't, and perhaps, Fon thought on one of those unnerving occasions, she understood what was really happening with their resident psychic and mist guardian.

Viper was strange and creepy, but not creepy enough for Fon to ignore the fact that the illusionist was an undoubtedly fascinating person.

The concepts of psychics and illusions were foreign to Fon.

He understood the physical capabilities of the human body better than most; as a martial artist, he had to know the limitations of his own strength and abilities, for if one understood their boundaries, they could continually challenge them. But he'd never believed in things like telekinesis until the day he met Viper. The human mind was powerful, Fon knew, but he'd never seen someone pick another up and throw them across a room without touching them.

(After that, Skull never walked within ten feet of Viper without asking for permission first.)

Viper wore nothing but black everyday, and tended to favor his heavy, black cloak and a hood over his head. Whatever he wore, he never left even an inch of himself exposed other than a small fraction of his face.

Enough for the twin markings on his cheeks to be perfectly visible.

"They're birthmarks." He said one rainy day when Luce asked him. They were once birthmarks, shaded in with violet ink to give them a definitive shape. To let everyone know that he was not like the rest of them.

Come to think of it, that had actually been the first time any of them had ever heard his voice. Viper rarely spoke, but when he occasionally broke his silence, it was barely above a whisper, and everyone had to strain their ears slightly to hear him.

Skull (who apparently conveniently forgot that Viper could throw him down the stairs if he really wanted, and certainly wouldn't hesitate to) would always jokingly tease Viper for being shy, but to Fon, shy didn't quite describe it.

To Fon, it seemed more like Viper found the company of other people to be burdensome.

Luce explained to him one day that most illusionists were introverted and reclusive by nature; after all, who needed the mundane human world and the company of normal people when illusionists could create entire fantasy realms around them if they so willed it?

But then, that didn't seem to complete the story in Fon's mind either.

Truthfully, Viper _was_ introverted, not to mention extremely reclusive; Fon recalled several times during the first few weeks where literal days would pass with them seeing neither hide nor hair of the psychic. But for some reason, it didn't feel like it was completely by choice.

And in Viper's defense, he did reach out to them in his own way, sometimes.

When Luce asked him to join them for dinner Viper would come down, and he made it a point to be seen by her, if only to prove that he was there for an instant, before he disappeared back to his room. He often got into long moral and religious debates with Verde and Reborn around a bottle of whiskey, and the three would sit around late into the night.

Fon was unsure of whether Viper was actually religious; he certainly would never have pegged him to be a devout follower of a religion like Christianity, as it seemed so opposed to everything Viper represented. Viper was a dark soul, and he dabbled in black magic and the like, this they all knew for sure because Viper outright told them so.

"Do you worship the devil or something?" Skull, naturally, was the one to cave in and ask what everyone had secretly been wondering that first week.

"No," Came the deadpanned reply.

"But I've met him," He had added, simply as an afterthought. "He's quite a lovely creature."

Needless to say, Viper usually won those religious debates. His perceptions and thoughts, if they could even be called so, were so frightening at times that no one could sleep soundly in the house after hearing them.

Except for Viper himself, of course.

Viper seemed more at home in the darkness and unknown than anywhere else; Luce often told Fon that many illusionists had an intrinsic tie to the realm of the supernatural, for to have the power to form such abstract things as illusions purely from the mind, one had to be _of_ the abstract _themselves_.

"Maybe he's a vampire. Ever thought of that?" Skull said one evening, staring at Viper's vacant seat.

Across the room, Luce sighed loudly, if not a bit disappointedly, at Skull's insensitive words. "You shouldn't slap labels on others just because they live differently than you do, Skull." She said quietly as she crocheted the last stitch of her scarf, tying it off neatly.

"Aww come on, I'm just making an observation! I mean, have you ever seen him eat anything? And the fact that he almost never goes outside. And if he does, he has to wear that heavy ass cloak of his."

"Skull!"

"Hey, what if we had the pool blessed by a priest and then shoved Viper in? Do you think he'd burst into flames? Maybe his head'll start spinning around. How bat-shit would _that_ be?"

All Skull received was a heated, disapproving glare from Luce, as well as Lal, and a sigh from Fon.

"What?"

Skull had a penchant for tactlessness unlike any Fon had ever seen, but at the same time, he wondered if perhaps there was some credibility to the stuntman's observations. Viper did abhor going outside, and made no secret of it. Unless his presence was specifically required for any sort of training or for an assignment, he kept to the safety of the house. And when it was unavoidable, the illusionist wouldn't dare set foot outside without his cloak and hood on, regardless of the temperature.

Fon was fairly certain that Viper wouldn't burst into flames or any of the silly things Skull liked to imagine happening to Viper; Skull had a rather overactive imagination, not to mention he was still very bitter about being thrown across the living room, simply for patting Viper on the back in greeting. (Ironically, it was the one time he was actually _trying_ to be nice.)

But as sure as he was, the fact remained that Viper was something of a nightcrawler. Fon sometimes wondered if perhaps illusionists were a typically nocturnal bunch, or if that was a proclivity exclusive to their resident 'vampire.' Especially when he could hear the sound of Viper's door opening across the hall, along with the near silent footsteps padding downstairs.

After a few moments of silence, Fon's curiosity got the better of him, and the martial-artist rose from his bed, stretching tiredly as he wandered out into the hall and down the stairs after the illusionist. The house was pitch black except for the faint light of the moon shining in through the larger windows, and the moon's light guided Fon through the house.

Finally, after a few minutes of searching, he heard someone moving about in the kitchen, and peaked his head in. Viper was just closing the refrigerator, a glass of something pink in his hand, which to Fon's surprise, was as exposed as the rest of the illusionist's torso.

Perhaps then, it should've made a bit more sense why Viper wore his cloak all of the time.

He was clad in only the bottom half of his usual ensemble, his baggy, black harem-style pants hanging low on his slim waist as he sat up on one of the counters, still sipping at his drink. But what struck Fon the most about the smaller man's appearance were the symbols tattooed over the entirety of his torso, and up both of his arms.

They were in a foreign tongue that Fon didn't recognize; entire verses of the foreign script were painted along Viper's sides and back, with strange, almost alien symbols engraved up his slim arms and over his shoulders and collar.

"You can come in you know, I won't bite you." Viper droned suddenly, and Fon nearly jumped. He had assumed that his hiding place had been perfect, but in retrospect, how effective could it have been against a psychic?

"You caught me." Fon said with a quiet laugh as he walked into the kitchen. Viper simply shrugged before taking another sip from his glass. Fon made to turn the light on, then immediately thought better of it. Somehow, he felt that maybe Viper would've appreciated it more if he left the light off.

"They're spells, in case you were wondering." Viper said as Fon took a seat at the table a few feet away.

"Spells?"

"Mm."

And it was then that Fon realized something he was quite ashamed at himself for not noticing sooner. As if seeing Viper, who was usually so immaculate and guarded about his appearance, half-dressed wasn't shocking enough, the illusionist was also apparently feeling so casual that for once, he was not wearing a hood over his head.

Without his usual black hood to keep himself completely hidden, Viper seemed almost like a different person to Fon in that moment. More accurately, he seemed like a real, _complete_ person, and not just a figment of the shadows. Dark indigo hair stopped just above his bare shoulders, his bangs hanging down over his icy blue eyes; eyes which were focused intently on Fon's own brown ones.

"You're staring." Viper said flatly.

At that, Fon began to laugh, which earned him a slight frown from the illusionist sitting on the counter with his legs folded indian-style.

"I apologize. It's just…well, I've never seen you so exposed. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. And I must say…"Fon said quietly before trailing off into a chuckle.

Viper's frown deepened.

"What?"

"I can understand now why Skull thinks you're a vampire. Your skin is so pale, you're almost translucent."

Viper scoffed. "Skull is an idiot. And if that _were_ true, I'd go out of my way to kill him first." The illusionist said, a dangerous edge in his low, monotone voice.

"Oh no," Fon began, "I suppose that's what's called 'throwing someone under the bus?' Skull's going to hate me tomorrow."

"What does it matter? The opinion of an imbecile like him means nothing." Viper said before downing the last of his drink.

"Your spells. May I ask what they're for?" Fon asked suddenly. Viper's eyes narrowed as they locked on him, the illusionist licking his lips as he set his glass down on the counter next to him.

After a few minutes, Viper's eyes slid shut as he sighed. "They're for protection."

"Protection? From what?"

Viper slid down from the counter and came to stand in front of Fon. In the moonlight, the markings that covered Viper's body seemed almost alive with energy, and as if it had a mind of its own, Fon's finger lifted to the illusionist's stomach, tracing an odd symbol tattooed around Viper's bellybutton.

"They protect me from the things that used to hurt me as a child," Viper began quietly, "things that no longer hold any sway over me."

Fon looked up at the psychic looming slightly over him. "What kinds of things?"

Viper smiled forlornly. "Things that none of you could even begin to understand."

"And, perhaps it is best that way." Fon said more to himself as he continued to trace the intricate symbols, the feeling of the slightly raised skin underneath his fingertip slowly becoming so intoxicating that one finger eventually became two, then three, and soon became the entire palm of his hand.

Viper's breathing hitched audibly as Fon's hand slid from his flat stomach to his hip, the martial artist unconsciously pulling him closer.

"Don't." Viper snapped quietly. But he was ignored as Fon's hand crept up his side, a slight smile snaking its way onto Fon's face at the tingling sensation in his hand and his fingers.

"I'm sorry," Fon whispered, "I just can't seem to help myself."

The warm hand crept up his hip at a snail's pace, so slow that Viper could feel the calloused skin of Fon's battle-worn hands brush over each symbol and word, and it made them tingle in a way Viper was ashamed to admit he found unbearably pleasant.

"Did it hurt? When you received these?" Fon asked as his hand moved from Viper's hip to the bottom of his ribcage and back over his stomach.

"It was a torturous process, but one I had to endure to achieve my full potential-ah!" Viper gasped suddenly when Fon's hand passed over his lower stomach, the illusionist's stomach hollowing slightly, purely out of reflex.

Viper backed away from the martial artist, panting lightly.

"Are you alright?" Fon asked, face and voice laced with concern.

"I'm fine," Viper said brusquely. "I'm just a bit…"

"Hmm?"

"…ticklish." Viper said, a slight edge to his otherwise flat tone. Fon stood up, laughing quietly.

"Then I must apologize for my forwardness. Your tattoos tingle with such a warm sensation…I must admit, it's quite intoxicating."

Viper nodded in agreement as he poured himself a smaller glass of his strawberry milk. "It's alright. Just don't get used to it."

Fon allowed himself a small chuckle at the sharp, yet oddly flat tone of Viper's voice. He couldn't think of anyone else who could manage to sound bored and annoyed at the same time.

But Viper, of course.

"Yes, yes. Well then, I'll be heading off to bed now." Fon said as he walked toward the doorway.

"Oh, and Viper?"

"Hm?"

"I must also admit that it's nice seeing you like this. With your guard completely down, I mean. I can only imagine what everyone else's reactions would be. I'm sure Skull, for one, would waste no time in hitting on you, at the risk of his own life, naturally."

Viper nearly choked on his milk. "Excuse me?" He snapped, wheezing slightly.

Fon shrugged casually as he walked out into the hallway. "I'm just saying that it's a shame you hide yourself under all of those hoods and heavy clothes. Such a bewitching face and body hidden under all of those layers."

Viper actually did choke on his milk that time.

And with that, Fon disappeared upstairs, a small grin on his face.

Viper was still a great mystery to him, that much was certainly true. But Fon was resolved to get to know Viper better; the man hidden underneath the cloak and secrecy, and if there was one thing Fon had above all else, it was patience. Viper was only human, just like him, just like the Arcobaleno, and Fon went to bed with the hope that he would get to see the illusionist show more of that human side to him. Opportunities would come and go, and piece by piece, Fon would unravel the mystery that was Viper.

Suddenly, he heard the mist guardian's quiet coughs in the hallway, followed by a door opening and closing. The martial artist laughed quietly to himself.

_And seeing Viper completely flustered was certainly a wonderful bonus, _Fon thought with a smile.

What fascinating creatures illusionists were.

* * *

><p>I hope you all enjoyed this!<p>

Expect many more Adult!Arcobaleno fics outta me, because they have not been done enough justice in this fandom, and that is quite shocking to me.

Also, I've realized that I really like getting Skull beaten up/verbally abused/in trouble. He is now my BITCH.

If you liked it, Read and Review!

-S*B


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